ASK Cubby – You Shoot The Questions, I Dodge Them

“Muddle-Brained fixing the rules

Hi Cubby,

I’ve been thinking ever since you posted your last angry letter about you complaining that RC racing is broken, Or something to that extent. So I thought I’d throw out a couple of ideas. This probably isn’t uncommon to you but it gets it out of my head so something is achieved. First fix, All the driver classes and separation of drivers seems easily fixed with, Strangely, A new class. Overall. Have the Sportsman, Pros and whoever else race together with their current classes becoming just a designation beside their name. This also allows for stories of the club driver having a great meeting and getting to the A main or whatever at, Say the Cactus Classic. If so wanted, Organizers can still hand out trophies for everyone like participation awards at a primary school sports day, But that’s neither here nor there.

As for cars, Classes should be made much simpler as you go down. I am a 1/10 off-road guy, So this is a bit bias of that, I would say that all classes (Buggy/Stadium Truck/SCT) and motor size limitations should be treated the same as driver classes above, Making for a multi-class extravaganza. Sadly, I think that would be instantly knocked down as a concept, So applying it as the club standard and slowly splitting as it goes up is a good way of possibly keeping people in at a low level for cheap. If you can turn up with a Bandit with some cheap updates and run at the big local event, That’s awesome. You might do poorly, But you also might see your name on a list competing against your RC heroes, And that’s something to hold on to.

I would go into rules, But I’m unsure how most clubs handle it in the US. They should be simplified as you go down in level. Even if you are something like OCRC (Only club I can think of) You should have 2wd and 4wd only, No motor rules and no ROAR approval required. No-one is racing for money at a club, Or fame, Or anything other than the fun of racing RC at that level. If you need to spend a grand on your car and absolutely need to win to ‘have fun’, Good for you. I bet the guy with the Helion 2wd and ‘eBay special’ electronics pack is having equal amounts of fun for 1/4 of the price. In the right hands, It’ll even beat your carbon-fibre rocket.

I believe it’s pretty simple and mostly common sense things that fix a lot of things. I’m probably wrong but I had a go at it.

Kyle C.”

Cubby- Well hello there Kyle, and congrats, yours is letter of the month. I’m sure you know how this works, you send me your snail mail and shirt size, we hook you up with one of our t-shirts.

Here is something interesting that I have not brought up before. RC racing is very slow at the local level, but still gets good turnouts at big events. The exact same thing has happened to motocross racing here in the USA. Turnout at local moto tracks is wayyyy down, while big amateur events like Loretta Lynn’s, are enormous. This goes to show that overall, marketing has nudged consumers to be more hardcore. Being more hardcore encourages the people that participate to spend more money, no matter if it’s rc or motocross. However, the downside is that casual users are pushed away. The bigger problem is that MOST people are average users, so the masses are getting pushed away, while the hardcore guys are maxing out credit cards to try and keep up.

Here in America our sanctioning body is called ROAR. Over the past 20 years the rules have not changed much. When they are changed, they are changed to benefit the hardest of the hardcore, not the noobie. In fact, noobies are all but forgotten in the rule book. Listen, I certainly don’t have the answer on fixing racing, but it won’t get fixed without a major overhaul, something that ROAR just isn’t capable of doing.

Thanks for writing in with your suggestions to fix racing Kyle, I hope somebody somewhere reads them and takes note. They might not be what can fix racing either, but change is slow and it has to start somewhere.

“New products

Hey Cubby! Whats up? Jimmy D here.

I have not written to you for a while, but with all the new product releases from Arrma, I thought it was about time. So Arrma is releasing two new 4wd vehicles with “power modules” and batteries for under $250! It took this long for someone to do this? Wow. I think they have a hit on their hands and is probably the only competition Traxxas will have this holiday season. (Arrma: you a need scale truck). Anyway my thought is that for these all new designs, they need proper parts support. Cubby, you once said if you were coming out with a new vehicle, you send it to the LHS with plenty of parts to go with it. I could not agree more. Its great that these are coming out, and Arrma has definitely made a dent in the bashing world, but to truly make a statement, parts availability is key.

That is why the big T is so popular, because you can dust off the old 2wd Slash with cracked in half chassis sitting the garage since 2011 and go the LHS and get a new one- no mail order, no eBay ordering, just good ole fashion shopping because most LHS stock Traxxas parts. Why, most likely the LHS makes a lot of money on them- which is good, but more importantly, they sell mostly Traxxas vehicles, so they stock most of the parts and people keep coming back. I have personally seen the store brand rc car on the self, and little Johnny picks it because its cool and daddy didn’t want to spend the extra $50 for the big T brand. Daddy than ask the sales person, “can little Johnny get parts for it here” and salesman says ” sure, we can order them and have them in a few days”. Thats not good when little Johnny breaks a part after church showing off for his friends, and can’t fix until the next weekend; providing daddy can take him to the LHS to order it. Arrma, don’t let little Johnny down- send extra parts with the RTR’s! Arrma should buy end caps and put big card board signs up and say ” here are the part for new Arrma” Then should make aluminum versions of the plastic parts for triple the price and anodize them in some weird color. That’s the way to keep little Johnnys involved and happy.

Now on to Pro-Line- I was going to wait to write this after 10/14/17, the release the new Pro-Line car, but it looks like its going to be a bad ass monster truck with pillow ball suspension, 1/8 scale something that uses a lathe to make the parts(watch the teaser video). Here is my point- the PRO-MT was the basher of the year, and yes, it is bad ass, but wait, i cannot order one, because no one has them anymore! even worse, its hard to find the parts for the Pro-line cars! What happened Pro-Line, is the run over with? My point is that what ever you release on 10/14/17- you best have parts for it for a long time or least soon after it hits shelves.

What is your take on Horizon selling Associated again? I think it is good for the hobby. Competition makes things better, but it could be viewed as going to the the Chevy dealer to buy a Ford. Horizon won’t be selling Futaba or Axial for the foreseeable future, but apparently this business needs to change, so anything is possible.

What are you thoughts?

Jimmy D.

P.S. Tamiya Dancing Rider is awesome and you need to you to do a review on one!, or least a review on Konghead (with a 2200kv motor with 4s in it)”

Cubby- As always, good to hear from ya Jimmy D.

First off, ya, I think an all new design should ship to local hobby shops with a couple giant boxes of replacement parts. However, hobby shops are dying off left and right. There just aren’t that many shops left now days. So even if every hobby shop in America had its pegs full of ARRMA parts, they still wouldn’t be accessible to many hobbyists. It blows, but that’s the state of our hobby at the moment.

About the new ARRMA Granite 4×4 and Senton 4×4. Yup, when I saw they were going to be announced even I had to smile. The price point is great and most ARRMA products are spot-on. Once again it looks like someone at ARRMA really has their act together, I hope they make a million bucks on their new trucks (or more).

About the upcoming Pro-Line release. I can’t say anything at the moment, but I’m sure you’ll either be at the bash in California to see it in person, or you’ll be tuned into BigSquidRC to watch its unveiling. Yes, it is gonna be a big deal. I saw another website “complaining” about so many teaser videos, but then I don’t think they realize just how big this one is gonna be.

Lastly… my take on Horizon selling AE products again. IMO it’s good. It’s good for Horizon, even though they own Losi, and it’s good for AE. I think it’s also good for consumers. Yes, I know that AE and Losi have been “at war” since the very beginning, but things are different now. Now it’s a whole lot more about making it through this rough patch than about old rivalries. I also like that tracks with an attached race shop can now pick up the “big two” from one distributor, just like in the old days.

Oops!…I did it again, another ASK Cubby is in the bank. Feel free to shoot me an email- thecubreportrc at gmail dot com. You can ask car questions, high-end watch questions, you can talk about problems with your ex, or you can leave a rant about whatever it is that’s bugging you.